Buona Festa! Happy Feast! This weekend, we honor and celebrate our heavenly patron, Saint Alphonsus Maria de Ligouri. St. Alphonsus was born near Naples, Italy. He became a lawyer at an early age, but gave up his promising law career to be a priest. As a priest, he showed himself both virtuous and effective. He is known for his groundbreaking work in the area of moral theology and for founding a religious order, the

Redemptorists. St. Alphonsus eventually became a bishop. He died on August 1, 1787.

Saint Alphonsus, pray for us!

I am gearing up to do an update to the parish library. If you have a favorite spiritual reading book that you recommend for others to read, please let me know. I’ll make a list and see if we can’t include it in our updated collection.

Supporting the formation of our seminarians is one of the very best ways that we can assist the church. Our seminary is growing, and the men studying there now will one day be serving as priests in our parishes. Please continue to pray for an increase in vocations to the priesthood here in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. If you’d like the chance to support the seminary financially, you may consider attending the 13th Annual Seminary Dinner on Friday, September 18, at the Wisconsin Center. Seats at the dinner are $150.00. If you are interested in being a part of a table from St. Alphonsus, let me know and we can try to organize something. I plan to attend.

Next weekend, at all Masses, we will welcome Sr. Lucy Marindany of the Little Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi. Sister Lucy is coming to us to speak for the annual Mission Appeal and will speak about the good work of her community. Join me in extending to her a very warm welcome.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

~Fr. Aaron Esch

Rectory/Outreach Building—Frequently Asked Questions

QUESTION: Why would we want to take on more debt when we still need to pay off our existing mortgage?

ANSWER: There was some confusion regarding the scope of our potential capital campaign. This campaign is principally driven by our need to service our debt. Since we have to do a campaign to address the outstanding mortgage, it makes sense to incorporate some other pressing needs.

This campaign will not be adding to our debt, but paying it down AND making some needed improvements to the campus. The funds from our most recent campaign, Faith in our Future, will expire in June 2016, and at that time we anticipate having about $1.6 million dollars remaining to pay. Debt reduction will be the major component of this campaign. It is my goal to retire the debt during my tenure as pastor. Yet, we also need to secure the future of our facilities. It is not a matter of choosing to pay down the debt or fix up our facilities, we need to do both.